In his first address to Congress in 2001, George W. Bush said the following:
Many of you have talked about the need to pay down our national debt. I listened, and I agree. We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to act now, and I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. At the end of those 10 years, we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.
Sound familiar?
From President Obama’s speech earlier today:
So this is my approach to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 12 years. It’s an approach that achieves about $2 trillion in spending cuts across the budget. It will lower our interest payments on the debt by $1 trillion.
Representative Paul Ryan(R-WI) in the Wall Street Journal on April 5th:
Our budget, which we call The Path to Prosperity, is very different. For starters, it cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president’s budget over the next 10 years, reduces the debt as a percentage of the economy, and puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our national debt. Our proposal brings federal spending to below 20% of gross domestic product (GDP), consistent with the postwar average, and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion.
If recent history shows us anything, Americans must beware of any proposal that promises something 10 years from now. In the next 10 years, we will have had three Presidential Elections and five Congressional Elections.
The longest period of time any member of Congress or President can really promise anything is two years. Even then, those projections should be taken with a pinch of salt and with the trash out to the curb.
